Changelings Update #19 – Changelings Becomes “The Tear”

THE TITLE CHANGE

After a lot of thinking and discussions with my new producer, we’ve decided to change… Changelings to The Tear. Maybe it’s a mistake to go changing the title this far into the process, but I believe it’s for the best for a few reasons.

THE COMMERCIAL REASONS

Changelings had always been part of a larger property. It was always a pitch, not only for my abilities as a storyteller, but for the world that celestial event known as The Tear produced, so it became difficult pitching an idea that didn’t possess a clear, straight line of an idea from soup to nuts. I want to be pitching the world every time I pitch the short. It simplifies things.

Imagine going around pitching an idea for a gadget with a gadget that had a different name! I don’t think that makes any sense and neither did my producer, Mark.

The Tear is a world where infinite stories can fit inside of it, and I want to be able to pitch the world, not just the short, or the feature based on this short, but the world. I’m trying to make this a property that can expand out into every kind of story and budget, because when you pitch, it’s better to swing for the moon. You see, investors like it if there are more opportunities to make their money back on an investment. By aligning Changelings with the world of The Tear, I can point to it as example of the world and sell multiple stories, movies, TV shows and merchandise. I could even fold pre-existing intellectual properties that I option into the world of The Tear.

So, from a commercial standpoint, it just made sense to fold Changelings into the whole, make it easier to pitch and make it easier to sell.

THE THEMATIC REASONS

The more I wrote Changelings, the greater the role and presence The Tear took within the story. It became clear to everyone who have read subsequent drafts that The Tear was a character in and of itself, which was great! Everything became better, more ominous, frightening and epic.

As it hangs over our characters, we get a sense of its power and influence over our characters and the entire world.

This tied the whole thing together. The Tear itself is a tear in the fabric of the world. The changelings themselves are torn apart whenever they transform. Our characters themselves are facing torn relationships. Finally The Tear’s form feels like a rip in the sky.

Mark also had a great suggestion that we mention that the Catholic Church has experienced a schism, creating the New Catholic Church as a result. A schism, is a tear.

This whole thing is like a poem now. 😉 I can see all the pieces fitting together like a whole!

That’s the big news for the moment. I’m putting together a table read now that the story and aesthetics read like a complete picture. More on that soon. I realize that this will create confusion when looking back through my posts, so I’ll have to waste a hashtag for the rest of my posts as a breadcrumb.

Oh, well. The change makes the story better. It makes everything better and I am not looking back.

WHO DIS IS

If you want to know who I am and what Distant Signal is, check this out. It’s sort of a manifesto. The TL;DR is that I’ve won an award for producing, make a lot of reality TV, live in LA and think that artist and media incentives are misaligned and serve large corporations and not independent artists.